{"id":3728,"date":"2015-08-14T10:03:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T10:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2015\/08\/14\/sarita-boodhoo-58\/"},"modified":"2017-09-19T13:35:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T09:35:19","slug":"sarita-boodhoo-58","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/sarita-boodhoo-58\/","title":{"rendered":"India My Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

For A 68th Independence Anniversary <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I borrow this title from Osho\u2019s book India My Love – Fragments<\/em> of a Golden Past (Hind Pocket Books 1996). India continues to fascinate since time immemorial. From the time that Megasthenes from Greece, Fa Yien, Hiuen Tsang, Yijing from China and Al Biruni, Al Masudi, Islamic savants travelled to India in search of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

From VS Naipaul\u2019s A Wounded Civilization<\/em> to a nuclear power and serious IT player, Indian civilization has navigated to the post-modern era and now moves into a futurist destiny. .Like its ancient sacred river Ganga, India is tantalising, mesmerising as well as alluring. Revered as Bharat Mata, Mother India by Indians including the 30 million strong diasporic peoples as well as innumerable non-Indians, she continues to cast a spell. Insaisissable as the French would put it. The ancient Indian sub-continent was identified as a region of historic trade and vast empires.<\/span><\/p>\n

India<\/span>\u2019s image as an underdeveloped country, the land of Maharajas, snake-charmers and the rope-trick gradually has given way to that of a vital pulsating global player, with a major role in steering international policy, impacting the international polity and global markets. <\/span><\/p>\n

British Raj and The Setting Sun<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Europe entered India, a new attitude developed. The British administrators saw a new conquest in India: the British Raj or simply the Raj. The British Empire acquired new prestige and the vastness of a sub-continent with \u2013 to them – its strange peoples and tongues. Britannia ruled India and the waves where the sun never set. To the ever-thirsty scholars of Europe like Max Muller, George Grierson, Romain Rolland, Alain Renou and Alain Danielou, Indology would take a new dimension. The study of India\u2019s rich linguistics, ethnography, philosophy and sacred texts would lead to the discovery that Sanskrit is the mother of Indo-European languages. The sluice gates to a new culture of learning and knowledge would open wide to the West.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the sun did set. The Indian Ocean waves bid good-bye to the British. When they felt they could no longer hold on to the huge sub-continent, its exchequer having been exhausted by World War II, Prime Minister Clement Atlee announced in February 1947 that the British Government would grant full self-governance to British India by June 1948. Agitations for Independence had for sure started way back with the first war of Independence of 1857 followed by the All India Congress with Mahatma Gandhi leading the Independence Movement, without forgetting the contribution of Subhas Chandra Bose. In fact, Independence came by 15 August 1947 with the tragic partitioning of India – a House Divided.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tryst with Destiny<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus the Constituent Assembly met for its fifth session at 11 pm on 14th August in the Constitution Hall in New Delhi. The session was chaired by Rajendra Prasad from Bihar, who would become the first President of the Republic of India on 26 January 1950. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister delivered his famous Tryst with Destiny speech proclaiming India\u2019s Independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLong years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge\u2026At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom\u2026.\u201d Nehru added that \u201ca moment comes, which comes rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

For an anecdote of this historic episode it is said in \u2018Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins (Simon and Schuster: 1975) that at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 when Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy who became the Governor General of the new Government, would ask for his list of Cabinet Ministers, in his haste Nehru would hand over to him a blank sheet of paper\u2026. So elated he was at the historic tryst with India\u2019s destiny.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Twain: India-Cradle of the Human Race<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

If Mark Twain was intrigued by Mauritius\u2019s dazzling pristine beauty in the 19th century, he was still more so by India\u2019s fabled immensity and diversity. Mark Twain wrote in More Tramps Abroad in 1897: \u201dThis is India! The land of dreams and romance\u2026 It was the land of fabulous wealth but also of fabulous poverty he wrote. He saw India as a \u2018country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues\u2019\u2026 but also \u2018a cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of Tradition\u2026.\u2019 He concluded that India \u2019is the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

India is a Metaphor<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why indeed has India through the ages from its hoary past continued to hold such a sway over the whole world? Osho, the great modern philosopher and Guru sums it thus in his book \u2018India My Love – Fragments of a Golden Past\u2019 – It is not just geography or history. It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land, it is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry, something invisible but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields which no other country can claim. That indeed is the magnet that pulls the mighty and the less mighty to India\u2019s bosom. There is always this binding undercurrent of one absorbing overpowering unified culture that produces the great civilizational ethos. India is a poem, an epic at that.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

India<\/span> is certainly an eternal journey. It stretches from eternity to eternity. Today Narendra Modi, India\u2019s Prime Minister carries on this same message that inflames the world\u2019s imagination from USA to Japan, to China to Mongolia that \u2018the destiny of India is the destiny of the whole of humanity\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shashi Tharoor\u2019s Revelations<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

On 28th May 2015, the Oxford Union at the University of Oxford held a debate on the motion \u2018This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor, who was the Chief Guest at the commemoration of the 175th anniversary celebrations of the advent of Indian Girmitias to Mauritius was one of the proponents at the Oxford debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shashi Tharoor said that at the beginning of the 18th century, India\u2019s share of the world economy was 23rd %, larger than all of Europe put together. But by the time the British left India, its economy had dwindled to a mere 4% or lesser. Why? Many people argue that the British had contributed to India\u2019s development. But according to Tharoor, India was in fact governed for the benefit of Britain. India was indeed the Sone ki Chidia, tantalizing by its fabulous wealth. For 200 years when Britain rose as the ruler of the waves, for whom the sun never set, this tremendous rise was financed by its depredations in India. India became Britain\u2019s biggest cash cow, the biggest purchaser of British goods. He said: \u2018We literally paid for our own oppression.\u2019 Indian textiles were destroyed. The raw material cotton of India served to feed the newly developed manufacturing of textiles in Britain which was then sold back to India herself!<\/span><\/p>\n

Asia\u2019s Rising Super Power<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

But India being the great Eternal Mother with her ancient wisdom and philosophy has forgiven. The seventh largest country in the world, India with its 1.2 billion people today is the largest democracy on the planet. India\u2019s economy is the world\u2019s seventh largest with US $ 2.306 trillion as at April 2015 (International Monetary Fund\u2019s report). It is the world\u2019s third largest economy with US $ 7.996 trillions by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).<\/span><\/p>\n

India<\/span>\u2019s abundance and burgeoning middle class are an asset towards making her along with China one of Asia\u2019s two superpowers. With the market-based economic reforms of 1991 brought by Manmohan Singh\u2019s bold stand and clairvoyance, India is one of the world\u2019s fastest growing major economies today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Indian Miracle<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

As far as innovation is concerned, India lies much ahead of several advanced economies. By 2030 the world would be watching the Indian miracle, for India holds the largest number of young people avid for the fulfillment of their dreams of a better world. The technology savvy entrepreneurs and fast globalized firms make of India the second most favourable outsourcing destination after the USA. India has one of the world\u2019s most advanced sophisticated financial markets. It has the third largest standing army in the world, whose navy prowess at security manoeuvres in the Indian Ocean was displayed by INS Teg recently in our maritime waters. Unlocking India\u2019s potential is the new script being written by India\u2019s fifteenth Prime Minister. That is why the intrepid Narendra Modi continues to be wooed and respected in the world, bent as he is to take forward the aspirations and ambitions of India\u2019s common man forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

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